Sooooo, I built an electrolyzer in my garage that can process approx. 50+ gallons of tap water with KOH additive every hour. I don’t have a Honda FCX Clarity yet…lol…so for right now, I am tanking the products (Oxygen and Hydrogen), and using it in a fuel cell stack that cost me $4800. The Tanks are simply the "energy-storage medium". The point is: I am using free solar energy to turn cheap tap water into Hydrogen fuel. When the FCX Clarity does become a reality here in Oregon, what’s to keep me from never going to a gas station ever again? Assuming that I don’t exceed the vehicle’s 270-mile fuel range? Can you imagine it? Never needing an oil company for anything, ever again? Of course, most of them are plotting Natural Gas reformation to produce hydrogen fuel. But my process is cleaner…really as clean as it gets, really… Free fuel, as long as I have sunshine and water.
Yea, I know it’s already being used by others… I just can’t know why oil companies are pushing for the Natural Gas reformation route when it comes to Hydrogen. Other than the fact that it’s cheaper for THEM. But it makes waste, including CO2 and Methane gas. Though the Mathane can be used as a secondary fuel if burned, I suppose.
No, it’s NOT expensive. Asside from the $4800 fuel stack, and the Solar panels, which are $1200 a peice, being they are high-efficiency Polycrystiline Si. My panels track the sun, as well, which increases maximum energy output considerably. I designed the sun-tracking device using photo-sensitive receptors, and the 2-axis pankace gimble was also addapted by me from a design I saw on a tracking telescope once.
I should clarify that the INITIAL price seems prohibitive, but I have made about $7,500 as of my six-month mark simply by selling the O2 and the H2. That’s the tough part though, as I don’t have the hazardous materials permit required in Oregon to stockpile this stuff, so the 400 gallon pressure tanks are technically illegal in the first place, when storing that amount of liquid Oxygen. If there ever was an explosion, let’s say, there wouldn’t be any walking away for me. I mean, the house would be GONE. I guess THAT’s one downside of producing my own fuel, eh?

As it is right now, I am producing far more of both gasses then I really require to power my house, and what I sell back to EWEB (utility company) is nothing compared to what I could be producing if I had additional fuel stacks. Some of the 400-500 W variety…lol.
To wjc: I only have one fuel stack as it is, but it’s putting out about 90 KW, and I’m only using about 10KW max at any one time. I’m making enough electricity to power several EXTRA homes on my block – for the price of tap water and free solar energy. =) The thing is, EWEB would start to wonder how I am producing soooo much electricity if I upped my output onto the grid any further. As far as the utility company is concerned, I am using straight solar power – they don’t know about the hardware in the garage… LOL. The utilities pay small potatoes for the extra power you produce anyways; I am making way more money selling the O2 to local welding supply stores, and the H2, well selling that is slightly more tough geven the ammount that I am trying to sell. Making pure profit though. Tap water is cheap in the WIllamette Valley.

I reckon it is a fantastic thought. 50 gallons per hour? How many solar panels do you have? Sounds like you could also make electricity for your home. I live in Arizona where there is a lot of sunshine and want to do the same thing but don’t know if I could afford the initial costs. Lots use solar and store in batteries but that is only excellent for RV application where you can make use of small quantities of power.

Keep up the excellent work.

I have seen a lot of DIY information on making your own solar panels. I have even bought a couple of them. But, they have not been very helpful in the fact that they either call for buying tons of broken peices and putting them together, or buying each cell and building the frame, and wiring it together. I have a 14′X60′ Mobile home with the flat roof on it. It is in full sunlight 3/4 of every day. I am looking for an inexpensive way to build my own solar panel using the entire roof. I am not looking for the most efficient, because I have plenty of size to work with. I do not have a lot of electrical needs. I am on some medical machines though, if it werent for them I would probably just let the electric go and buy a propane fridge and stove and call it excellent. I do not want to spend a bunch of money on books either so please no advertisements on where to buy books on this subject. I have very small resources in the way of money or else I would just pay the electric bill, my electric company is 1/4 renewable energy anyway. So if anyone knows of a way to build this, or knows where I can get a book or website for free. please let me know. Thank you,
I have most of what I need. I have the inverter, the regulator and the wiring, what I do not have is the know how on how they built the first ones. I have seen some info. on the web. But not enough to even get me started. I am looking for how they made them back in the 50’s and 60’s when it took massive amounts of space. Because space I have, money I do not. Back then the parts would have costed a lot, but I am betting the parts are pretty cheap by todays standards since they would not be used for solar panels. They came up with the crystals sometime in the 60’s if my memory serves me. I am looking for instructions for the ones before that. I know I can not get more than an 8% yeild, but since I have the room to use, why not use it, if I can get the parts cheap enough to make it doable?

Other than the suggestion of buying surplus/used units that people are removing to get better efficiency – and I would reckon cities/towns might be more reliable in this area unless you make contact with a reliable club or group in your area (shipping being a factor)
The simple fact is that you are talking a huge area and the cost of solar cells has not come down that much and the labor in assembling the bits and pieces is still honestly high. The high early cost was the very costly equipment and its problems in making pure silicon disks – and there is no way you can do that part economically.

Solar lighting use photovoltaic cells to convert daylight into stored electricity for powering lighting devices when needed. Do you know any company that has a solar equipment to convert daylight into stored electricity for powering lighting at night for signboards?

You would need batteries to store the power, and batteries are not excellent for the environment!

I have seen a lot of DIY information on making your own solar panels. I have even bought a couple of them. But, they have not been very helpful in the fact that they either call for buying tons of broken peices and putting them together, or buying each cell and building the frame, and wiring it together. I have a 14′X60′ Mobile home with the flat roof on it. It is in full sunlight 3/4 of every day. I am looking for an inexpensive way to build my own solar panel using the entire roof. I am not looking for the most efficient, because I have plenty of size to work with. I do not have a lot of electrical needs. I am on some medical machines though, if it werent for them I would probably just let the electric go and buy a propane fridge and stove and call it excellent. I do not want to spend a bunch of money on books either so please no advertisements on where to buy books on this subject. I have very small resources in the way of money or else I would just pay the electric bill, my electric company is 1/4 renewable energy anyway. So if anyone knows of a way to build this, or knows where I can get a book or website for free. please let me know. Thank you,
I guess I should have place this in to start with. I already have the regulators, the inverter and the batteries. I use to have a wind and solar hybrid power plant in Montana when I was 6 miles from the nearest utility pole. I went to Oregon, and I still have the wind generator, which does small excellent where I live, it would sit up there for days before I got enough wind to produce enough electricity to run a light bulb for a few minutes. What I do not have is the solar panels. I know the new ones use crystals and a lot of things you can not get readily, what I do not know is how they made the older ones before the crystals, back in the 50’s when all this started out. They were only 6 to 8% efficient. (in most cases less) but the materials for them must be available somewhere relatively cheap, and since I have a large area to place it in. I would rather try to save a few dollars, and use the entire roof. I also have the wiring I would need as well I just need to find out how it was done

Instead of trying to make your own solar panels from ancient parts that may or may not work I would suggest you look for applications where solar panels are presently used on a temporary basis and then not recycled. Consider some place where a battery needs to be kept charged while being shipped and then not afterwords.

Alternatively you should be looking for overstocked or out of date units. None of this may be simple to find. You will be paying in effort what you don’t pay out of your pocket.

If you can’t come up with any possibilities then send me an email.

I have seen a lot of DIY information on making your own solar panels. I have even bought a couple of them. But, they have not been very helpful in the fact that they either call for buying tons of broken peices and putting them together, or buying each cell and building the frame, and wiring it together. I have a 14′X60′ Mobile home with the flat roof on it. It is in full sunlight 3/4 of every day. I am looking for an inexpensive way to build my own solar panel using the entire roof. I am not looking for the most efficient, because I have plenty of size to work with. I do not have a lot of electrical needs. I am on some medical machines though, if it werent for them I would probably just let the electric go and buy a propane fridge and stove and call it excellent. I do not want to spend a bunch of money on books either so please no advertisements on where to buy books on this subject. I have very small resources in the way of money or else I would just pay the electric bill, my electric company is 1/4 renewable energy anyway. So if anyone knows of a way to build this, or knows where I can get a book or website for free. please let me know. Thank you,
If I haven’t mokeyed with them before. Because I did.
Hawaii sponger I appreciate what you are saying. And I would support that if I have monkeyed around with it before myself. I had a wind and solar hybrid power plant when I was in Montana and lived 6 miles from the nearest power pole. I learned how to set one up along with solar hot water and hot water heat. In fact mine got me a few jobs when I was there and set up 5 others. But I do not want to spend a fortune on the solar panels the way I did before. That is why I am wandering if I can build a solar panel like they did in the 50’s when PV’s started out. I know they do not produce a lot and you need a lot more of them, but the materials they use to use when it started was materials that were simpler to get than the new materials are. But, after web searching and reading a lot of books and spending money hoping to find someone with the answers I am not having any luck, on what they used or how they place it together.

Oscar, get thee to a library. You can find information there that will give you choices and directions on building solar panels. Even maybe some older manufacturing process. Remember though to cover the finished unit with a transparent shield against weather harm.
Spartawo…

i have some already:
vacuole: garbage area
cell wall:the walls of the building
chloroplasts:solar panels
nucleus:manger of the company the boss
cell membrane:the security
cytoplasm:as the different rooms

now i need nucleolus, ribosome, golgi apparatus, lysosomes, mitochondria

nucleolus – staff
ribosomes – janitor
golgi apparatus – transport machine
lysosome – drainage system
mitochondria – power plant for building.

This company produces thin solar panels. A lot of tiny details viewable in this youtube video off of their site http://www.nanosolar.com/technology Basically, an ink jet printer prints solar cells on aluminum.

So, what would happen if you took these aluminum strips, and manufactured them in a way to replace the current skin on a Boeing 737. No excess weight should be added, because instead of paint, this high-tech Nanosolar technology is being used.

Shouldn’t this over the surface area of the aircraft, provide enough electricity to run an APU?

This is a proof of concept theory, and reliability can always be improved, I just need to know if it would even be plausible

Check out their website and see how small these cells truly are

The wing area of a Boeing 737-900 is 125 m^2. Fuselage length is 42 m and width is 3.8 m; so overall, the area that could be illuminated at any time would be a maximum of 280 m^2 or so.
Solar constant is 1366 W/m^2, but that assumes no attenuation due to the air nor being 100% transparent, no cloud and high noon, so the absolute maximum solar energy that it could capture would be 382 kW.
But solar cells are not 100% efficient, far from it really. The technology you refer to is about 15% efficient, so the actual electrical power released (again, high noon, perfectly clear day) is 57 kW, about 76 hp. That is roughly 1/2 the power of a typical APU for an aircraft of that size, which will place out its power reliably no matter what the lighting conditions is, as long as there is fuel available.

Free energy is always attractive, but what the aerospace world is after is _reliable_ energy.
By the way, if you check your source, it does state that the "nanoparticle ink is coated onto a specially-prepared proprietary alloy of metal foil". Do we know if that foil is compatible with the material used for aircraft wing and fuselage panels?

So far I’ve researched Fuel Cell Energies, which partly runs on natural gas. I’ve also researched Solar Powered Energies which as we know relies on the Sun…What are some excellent long term stocks or funds within alt. energies? Do you reckon alt. energies are a promising investment? I’d feel fantastic knowing I’m helping invest into a Go Green company while making some $.

I don’t really know what the best investment is but don’t forget about wind power. I believe one of the leading corp.’s on that is Invenergy if you want to look them up.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=new-solar-cell-efficiency-record-se-2009-08-27

There are a few solar panels from this link but they are stating things like $2.00 per watt and $1.00 per watt. I thought we rated by kWh. So if I use an average of $.12 kWh under normal utility companies, how much would i be paying if I bought panels from this site that had the 40% efficiency rating? Is it roughly $.40 kWh? Or is it less than that and I am not reading the article right?
Again, how much does it cost? If the average user in NV uses $.12 kWh than what is a solar panel equivalent to 40% efficiency like in the link i posted?

To answer your specific questions, You buy power from the electric company in kW-hours, which is a unit of energy.

A 100 watt solar panel generates power at the rate of 100 watts. That means in 10 hours it will deliver energy equal to 100×10 = 1000 watt hours or 1 kW-hours.

"use an average of $.12 kWh" –– this makes no sense. kW-hour are not dollars. Perhaps you mean you PAY $0.12 PER kW-hour ? this makes sense.

40% means it converts 40% of the sun’s energy into power, it has nothing to do with the cost of electricity from your power company.

.

I have imported several samples of Solar Chargers from overseas. They recharge your iPhone,iPod,PDAs,Digital Cameras, MP3/MP4 Players, and other major cell phone manufacturer phones in the sun and work wonderfully. NOTE: they are not the Solio brand. They are a generic no name brand but work fantastic.

I am wanting to distribute them to industries that would reckon it would be useful for them to use because they are always on the go. Right now these are the thoughts I have, please add your thoughts!

1. Construction companies
2. Police departments
3. Outdoor camps
4. Tour guide companies
5. Delivery companies/Freights
6. Shipyards

Any other thoughts?

Solar chargers are a fantastic thought, but have problems of their own.

They charge only during the day, when you need your cellphone, camera, etc!
Plus, if you go back home at night, you can charge your device at home.

So, reckon for applications where you can’t find electricity for more than 24 hrs. For me, stores with camping supplies is your best bet. Plus emergency/disaster crews. although these guys usually have power generators.